Earths in Space: We Must Evolve excerpt #5

Earths in Space: We Must Evolve has arrived! The ebook is available, and so is the paperback edition. It’s not absolutely necessary to read the first book, but I certainly won’t stop you.

Let’s have another excerpt, shall we? We shall…

*****

“Good evening, Amena.”

Amena glanced at her before returning her gaze to the moon. “Hey, darling. Sleeping troubles?”

The way she said “darling” with the dropped g … No, it was probably nothing, Quin assured herself. Mere fanciful wishing.

“You could say. My apologies if I’m intruding.”

“You’re intruding on nothing. No worries.”

The “nothing” in this context implied a vacant mind, a person possessed of no deeper thought than her own social standing. But for all her enigmatic nature, Quin was sure of one thing: Amena was the least shallow person she had ever met. “When you look to the sky, what is it you see?”

The question earned Amena’s full attention, and she seemed delighted to respond. “The electromagnetic spectrum. Some of it, anyway. Have you heard of—”

“It sounds intriguing, but I must confess to ignorance on the subject.”

“It’s okay. Word just hasn’t gotten around yet. Anyway, basically, the electromagnetic spectrum is—it has to do with these wavelengths, a whole range of wavelengths.” Her hand swam through the air, bobbing up and down at regular intervals. “The widest could be as big as the universe, potentially, while at the other end, they get as small as the tiniest building blocks of the ittiest bittiest little thing.” Her arms continued to gesture, spreading far apart and swiftly pinching tight together, and then her hands just sort of rolled forward with her speech, as if necessary to siphon off her excess enthusiasm. “Within that, there’s this sliver of a sliver we call visible light. This whole huge spectrum—universe-level huge—and our eyes only pick up a sliver. We’re missing out on a lot.”

Quin looked at the bright moon, wondering what else bounced off it.

Amena’s arms drifted to her sides, and she sounded almost melancholy. “There’s so much more going on than we’ll ever see.”